Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

Memoirs / autobiographies, diaries, correspondence, and journalism.

Again, cross-references to my other topical lists are marked with the addition "cf."

* Plato: The Last Days of Socrates

(Classical Antiquity, Greece)
* Pliny the Younger: Letters

(Classical Antiquity, Rome / Italy)
* Pierre Abélard: Historia calamitatum (Histoire de mes malheurs / History of My Misfortunes), and Abélard & Heloise: Correspondence

(Middle Ages, France)
* Samuel Pepys: Diary

(Restoration, London)
* Samuel Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and James Boswell: The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson LL.D.

(18th Century, Scotland -- cf. list no. 8, "At Home and Abroad")
* Dieudonné Thiébault: Mes souvenirs de vingt ans de séjour à Berlin: Ou, Frédéric le Grand (translated as Original Anecdotes of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, and in German, Friedrich der Grosse und sein Hof: Erinnerungen an einen 20jährigen Aufenthalt in Berlin)

(18th Century, Germany)
* Voltaire: Über den König von Preußen: Memoiren

(Voltaire's memoirs of Frederic the Great's court -- I think German is the only language in which they've specifically been excerpted from the entirety of his memoirs  (The title translates as "On / About the King of Prussia: Memors.").  Together with Thiébault's account, above, probably the quintessential eyewitness account of life at Frederic's court.)

(18th Century, Germany)

* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Italian Journey

(late 18th century Germany and Italy -- cf. list no. 8, "At Home and Abroad")
* George Sand: Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life)

(19th Century -- cf. list no. 2, "Women's History")

* Helen Keller: The Story of My Life

(late 19th / 20th century U.S., disability -- cf. list no. 2, "Women's History")

* Teffi: Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

(Russian Revolution -- cf. list no. 2, "Women's History")
* Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast

(Early 20th century Paris -- cf. list no. 8, "At Home and Abroad")
* Alexandra David-Neel: Voyage d'une Parisienne à Lhassa (My Journey to Lhasa)

(Early 20th century, Tibet / Himalayas / exploration -- cf. lists nos. 2 & 8, "Women's History" and "At Home and Abroad")

* The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

(early 20th century Britain, mysteries and crime fiction -- cf. lists nos. 2 & 7, "Women's History" and "Literary and Cultural History")

* Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

(20th century Britain, mysteries and crime fiction -- cf. lists nos. 2 & 7, "Women's History" and "Literary and Cultural History")

* Beryl Markham: West With the Night

(British Kenya, aviation -- cf. list no. 2, "Women's History")

* James Herriot: All Creatures Great and Small

(early 20th century rural Yorkshire; veterinary practice -- cf. list no. 8, "At Home and Abroad")
* John Steinbeck: The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to The Grapes of Wrath

(Great Depression -- cf. list no. 6, "American History")
* Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts

(Pre-WW II Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia)

* Anne Frank: Diary

-- cf. lists nos. 2 & 5, "Women's History" and "WWII / National Socialism"
* Solomon Perel: Ich war Hitlerjunge Salomon (Europa Europa)

-- cf. list no. 5, "WWII / National Socialism"
* Astrid Lindgren: A World Gone Mad: Diaries, 1939-45

-- cf. list no. 5, "WWII / National Socialism"
* Hans Jürgen Massaquoi: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany

-- cf. list no. 5, "WWII / National Socialism"
* Library of America (anthology), Various Authors: Reporting World War II

-- cf. list no. 5, "WWII / National Socialism"

* Jennifer Worth: Call the Midwife

(Post-WWII Britain -- cf. list no. 2, "Women's History")

* Nicolas Bouvier: The Way of the World

(Post-WWII Eastern Europe and Middle East)

* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago

(U.S.S.R., communism / totalitarianism / Stalinism)
* Thomas Mann: Über mich selbst: Autobiographische Schriften

(Contains the text translated as A Sketch of My Life and several other bits and pieces of autobiography.  I don't think there is an  exact English equivalent.)
* Mahatma Gandhi: The Story of My Experiments With Truth

(South Africa, India, British Raj)
* Carl Zuckmayr: A Part of Myself, Portrait of an Epoch (Als wäre's ein Stück von mir: Horen der Freundschaft)

(20th century Germany and Hollywood; theatre and movie industry)

* John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley in Search of America 

(post-WWII U.S. -- cf. list no. 6, "American History")

* Library of America (anthology), Various Authors: Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1975

(Vietnam War -- cf. list no. 6, "American History")

* Willy Brandt: Erinnerungen (My Life in Politics)

(Post-WWII / Cold War Germany)
* Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Mein Leben (The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki)

(WWII Poland, post-WWII Germany, literature)
* Rosemary Goring (ed.): Scotland: the Autobiography: 2,000 Years of Scottish History by Those Who Saw it Happen

(Scotland -- cf. lists nos. 4 & 8, "History of the British Isles" and "At Home and Abroad")
* Irene & Alan Taylor (eds.), Various Authors: The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists

(various countries and periods)